Forsyth County Tax Administration Faster Methods for Listing and Processing Leasing Companies Presented by Sparky Owen, Greg Stoltz

Problem We define a leasing company as a taxpayer with multiple assets at multiple locations. Often the assets will consist of different types of property requiring numerous different trend factors.

Small Leasing Companies If the leasing company is small we often process the account like a regular account. We do not use our specialized leasing computer program. This is done when the number of assets is small enough to manually assign the assets to different accounts with little difficulty. This would generally apply to companies with 10 assets or fewer.

The leasing company computer program The leasing program we are going to demonstrate today is extremely helpful when assessing large accounts. The taxpayer’s information we are going to show you has about 40 assets. Some of our taxpayers may own hundreds or even thousands of assets at different locations.

History of processing leasing companies (Circa 1987) The data was summarized on an accounting ledger pad using a pencil and a calculator. This was extremely slow and tedious. Errors were very difficult to find. Pitney Bowes in Forsyth County would take 3 weeks to complete.

History (Circa 1996) Around 15 years ago we would situs and determine a trend factor for each asset on the taxpayer’s rendition. We would then key this information into Lotus and sort it by situs, trend factors and year acquired. We would take the sorted results and key it into our computer system by each account. Sorting with Lotus was a frightening experience. If you made an error, it would be like Humpty Dumpty. It could not be put back together.

History (Circa 1997) We switched to Excel. Excel was much easier to work with than Lotus. One of the hardest parts of processing leasing companies was finding the correct taxing jurisdiction for each asset. We would try to go back and look at last years listing from the taxpayer but is was almost always in a different sequence. We had to rekey the entire listing from the taxpayer in order to sort it for processing.

History (Circa 1998) Around 13 years ago, we mailed a letter to leasing companies asking them to send us their data electronically. Some did and some did not. Even today, which is years later, many companies will not send us the data by electronic means. Getting the data electronically helped, but we were still drowning in a sea of manual processes.

History (Circa 1998) Up to this point in time, we were sorting the information from the taxpayer in Excel and then keying it into our computer system to reach a value for each taxing jurisdiction. When the leasing companies would get ready to pay the tax bills they would contact us and want to know the value we assigned to each asset. The leasing companies want this information in order to pass the cost of property taxes on to their customers.

History (Circa 1998) We did not have a value for each asset listed by the leasing company. We would determine the trend factor and situs of each asset on the listing document during our processing of the account. We would then make a copy of the listing document, our Excel spreadsheets and applicable pages from the North Carolina trend manual. We would mail these documents to the taxpayer. The taxpayer would have to make the calculations to reach a value for each account. This was time consuming for the taxpayer as well as tax office personnel.

The Big Improvement (Circa 2000) Greg Stoltz, whom you will hear from shortly, along with computer programmers that were employees of Forsyth County developed a computer program that would value assets and then place them in the appropriate business personal property accounts. We would sort the leasing company data in Excel. The sorted information would be keyed into this system. This program would identify which accounts needed to be manually added or deleted.

The Big Improvement (Circa 2000) The program would also produce two reports for the taxpayer. These reports helped the taxpayer understand how the assets were assessed. This was a big improvement because of the ease of entering the data into our computer system and the ability to produce reports.

The Big Improvement’s Shortcomings Data had to be keyed into this system. Electronic information could not be imported. The reports produced for the taxpayer often did not contain enough detail because they were in summary form.

Our current leasing program (Circa 2008) Greg Stoltz of the Business Section of the Forsyth County Assessor’s Office will show you in detail how our current leasing program works.

It all begins with Excel A folder, named Leasing Companies – 2011, is created before receiving leasing data. Data, when received either by or CD, is saved in folder under the leasing company’s name.

Manipulating the data After the data has been saved in the folder, it is copied to a worksheet named Original. This is done in order to preserve the original listing. Sequence #’s are added in order to sort by address, description, etc. Addresses are edited, trending schedules are assigned.

Sheet1  After addresses have been edited, trending schedules assigned, etc., the data must be formatted a certain way in order for the tax office software (Tax.Net) to be able to read it.  The Original worksheet is copied to another worksheet, named Sheet1.

Tax.Net Leasing Program After Sheet1 has been formatted, the data is imported to Tax.Net. Leasing companies are identified by an asterisk and three characters. (ex. *BAL) This allows all listing numbers associated with the leasing company to be tied together. This is the step where the data is sitused, assessed and assigned to the various listing numbers. A new listing number is created for a jurisdiction in which assets were not reported in the previous year. Listing numbers are pulled (deleted) for those jurisdictions that had assets reported in the previous year but have since been removed.

It all ends with Excel o After Tax.Net has completed the processing of the account, data is exported back to Excel and it is saved as two files. o The first file, named Sequence, contains data sent in the same chronological order as the original by the taxpayer. o The second file, named Sorted, contains data that has been sorted into the various taxing jurisdictions. o These are ed back to the taxpayer.

Pros No additional keying of data with the exception of trending schedules. Majority of addresses automatically sitused. 60% to 70% estimated. Sitused addresses from previous year can be used to manually situs current year. Accounts automatically processed in county’s software. (Tax.Net) Ability to notify taxpayer of assessed values through .